An amphibian writer, translator, poltergeist,researcher... my doppelganger pretends to be a Professor of English, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

On Theorizing Indian Literatures and Cultures

As a
researcher in Indian literarures, languages and cultures, my interest in Semiotics of
Culture as a theoretical framework developed by the scholars of the Tartu- Moscow School of semiotics
especially Juri Lotman ( 1922-1993) stems from the fact that it:

I) Seesmeaning as being essentially
‘translational’ and ‘culture’ as essentially multilingualby underscoring
the fact that no meaning-making system can exist in isolation or can be
autonomous ( in contrast to Saussure) ……this core assumption
makes it pertinent to Indian society which is mindbogglingly diverse and
multilingual

II) sees
literature (printed or oral or performative) as belonging to a expansive category
of artistic texts thus going beyond the restrictive and colonial
print-centric view of literature ..it can allow us to understand the
dialogic and translational exchanges between the printed or oral literary
texts and texts from cinema, paintings,
dance or music

III)is of significant theoretical relevance
to Comparative Indian Literatures. The notion
of vertical isomorphism of the semiospheres existing in dialogic interactions
with each other at multiple levels allows us to conceptualize a
heterogeneous and stochastic ‘Indian semiosphere’ ( and consequently Indian
literatures as being generated by the Indian semiosphere)made up of multiple semiospheres
like ‘Marathi’ or “Gujarati’ semiospheres and these semiospheres can be
conceptualized as being heterogeneous and stochastic in their own right,
interacting dialogically with one another, different spaces within and interacting
dialogically with cultural traditions and cultural histories that are
neither specific to Marathi nor Gujarati (Sanskrit, Prakrit, Perso-Arabic, European, Chinese, and so on).

b) it is a
model of cultural change that highlights differential and non-linear modes of
development of the diverse co-existingmeaning-making systems…for
instance fashion, food and caste change at differential rates and poetry using
the poetics of the 1940s ( the Ravi-Kiran Mandal lyricism ) can co-exist with
the poetry using the avant-garde poetics of 60s in Marathi

c) It is a
model of cultural change that views mechanisms of cultural change as being
primarily ‘translational’….. it views the underlying mechanism in the generation of ‘the
new’ as being translational

V) It
provides tools and ideas for practical criticism of texts and their contexts

The notions of semantic tropes, ‘the
text-within-text, plot , the idea of symbol as plot-gene, continuous- discrete ( visual to verbal) dialogics and
so on.

VI)

The
mainstream academic cultural studies in India due to its excessive reliance on
French, American and British theories (which are monolingual, deterministic in
orientation) has failed to come to terms with multilingual and chaotic social
and cultural realities of India .

Its lack of critical self awareness can be seen in the
fact that as it criticizes modernity ( with the ideas of nation or science) as
being universalist, Euro-centric and elite on the one hand it has noissues uncritically accepting ‘ Critical Theory’ whose roots go back to
Frankfurt or Birmingham or Paris as if they are non-universalist,
non-Eurocentric and non-elite.

The
mainstream academic cultural studies have become reductive as it sees ‘political
interpretation’ as the absolute horizon for all interpretation’ (as Jameson
puts it)…. and extremely predictable almost conventional. However the conceptualization of culture in
semiotics of culture subsumes the
political as it sees cultural as fundamentally i) heterogeneous ii) asymmetrical
iii) chaotically dynamic and iv) constructivist in terms of epistemology and
cognition (seeing semiotic systems as ‘modelling’ systems)…in a sense subsumes
political to the cultural rather than reduce the cultural to the political.

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Sachin C. Ketkar (b. 1972) is a bilingual writer,
translator, editor, blogger and researcher based in Baroda, Gujarat. His recent
publication is a collection of Marathi critical articles on contemporary
Marathi Poetry, globalization and translation studies titled Changlya Kavitevarchi Statutory Warning:
Samkaleen Marathi Kavita, Jagatikikarn ani Bhashantar (2016). His Marathi
collections of poems are Jarasandhachya
Blogvarche Kahi Ansh (2010) and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana, (2004). His poetry in English
include Skin, Spam and Other Fake
Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in translation, (2011), and A Dirge for the Dead Dog and Other
Incantations (2003). Several of his writings on translation are published
as (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions
on Indian Translation Studies (2010).

He has extensively translated from Marathi and
Gujarati.Most of his translations of
contemporary Marathi poetry are collected in the anthology Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry (2005) edited by
him. Along with numerous recent Gujarati writers, he has rendered the fifteenth
century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta into English for his doctoral research. He
has also translated the work of the well-known contemporary Gujarati writers
like Manilal Desai, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakkar, Jayant Khatri, Mangal
Rathod, Jaydev Shukla, Rajesh Pandya, Rajendra Patel, Nazir Mansuri, Ajay
Sarvaiya and Mona Patrawala. He has also translated poems of Ted Hughes and
fiction by Jorge Luis Borges and Adam Thopre’s into Marathi. He won ‘Indian
Literature Poetry Translation Prize’, awarded by Indian Literature Journal,
Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2000.

He holds a doctorate from VN South Gujarat
University, Surat and works as Professor in English, Faculty of Arts, The
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. He is also Coordinator of
the department research project under UGC SAP DRS II on “Representing the
Region: Literary Discourses, Social Movements and Cultural Forms in Western
India, 1960-2000.